


the art of kissing in the rain

by barium



Category: Homestuck
Genre: I don't actually like The Notebook, M/M, but I like rain smooching, enjoy, so here it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 21:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6824422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barium/pseuds/barium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know, the one? They kissed in the rain. With the letters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the art of kissing in the rain

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is really just an excuse to use the word flabbergasted for the first time in my life
> 
> this can be a direct continuation of Among Bodies, if you'd like it to be

“What’s so special about that, anyway?”

Karkat turned to John with a deadpan stare. They were in a blanket fort in John’s house, doing their usual Friday movie night. While the question was prompted by the movie _The Notebook_ , they weren't actually watching it. They were watching _She’s the Man_ , but that’s beside the point.

Recently John has been spacing out a lot at some point during these nights with Karkat. This newly found relationship was kind of the biggest thing he had going on. He still had trouble getting used to the fact that Karkat was kissable now. Like, he’s kissed him before, and he could kiss him again whenever he wanted. Even right now. So naturally John got a little spaced out, when he started thinking about him and Karkat touching lips.

So while Amanda Bynes did her Amanda Bynes thing, John was imagining famous kissing scenes in history and replacing the people with him and Karkat.

There was that one World War II picture, where the two strangers spontaneously kissed in the street. Who would get dipped, between them? Karkat, of course. And then the Spiderman kiss, a true classic. That kiss was in the rain. He felt like there was another kiss in the rain, a big one, but he forgot what movie it was.

“Hey, Karkat,” he whispered. They were lying on their stomachs, facing a laptop screen under a cacophony of blankets. “What was that one kiss? In the movie?”

Karkat paused their movie. “Right, the movie, with the kiss,” he rolled his eyes, “I love that movie.”

“You do!” John sat up. “You know, the one? They kissed in the rain. With the letters.”

Karkat furrowed his eyebrows. “ _The Notebook_?”

“ _The Notebook_!”

“Why are you thinking about that?” Karkat reached for his drink, and sipped out of its straw.

John blushed. “I was thinking about kissing you.” He was a terrible liar, and Karkat always caught him anyways.

“In the rain.”

“Well, _no_ ,” John said. “Or, I guess. Just in general. I don't care about kissing in the rain.”

Karkat looked offended. “Why not?”

“Well I mean,” and this is when John said it: “what’s so special about that, anyway?”

Karkat flexed his hands, exasperated. “Are you serious?”

“Yes?”

“It’s _romantic_ , John.” He dropped his head to the blankets under him. His voice came out defeated. “I know you wouldn't know anything about it.”

John was struck with the desire to please. “That’s not true! I would kiss you in the rain.”

Karkat lifted his head to sit up. They were almost the same size when compared like this. “You wouldn't feel the magic of it.”

“Every kiss between us is magical, Karkat.”

“How awful of you.” He shoved him in embarrassment and John shook the fort with his laughter. “Goddammit.”

He pulled John’s chin to join their lips, and this was a kiss that sparked a war.

 

+

 

“I checked the weather and it's scheduled to rain in T-minus three days,” Dave said, shaking his phone. The weather app showed a bright yellow sun for the current day.

Jade nodded. “Plenty of time to prepare. John, what do you have planned?”

“He said I wasn't romantic,” John told her. “So I have to wow him.”

“I feel like you try to wow him romantically at least three times a week,” Dave said.

Rose chuckled. “That sounds accurate.”

“So you have no plan, then,” Jade said.

“That’s what you guys are here for!” John stood up from his bed to pace the room. Dave sat on the chair at his desk, and Rose and Jade lounged on his bed still. A mountain of blankets from the night before were pushed into a corner, John too lazy to be bothered putting them away. He said, “What haven't I done yet?”

“Why are you trying so hard, do you think?” Rose asked him.

John turned to her. “I don't know.” He considered. “I like him.”

Jade looked up from her phone. “You don't love him?”

“What? No,” he said, shaking his head. “I just like him. A lot, though. So you have to help me.”

“Haven't you seen every rom-com under the sun by now?” Dave said. “Do what you know. Write a note. Leave a trail of rose petals.”

“Go through a period of two years of romantic confusion and sexual tension because of an inability to communicate.” Jade grinned.

Rose hummed. “That is what we did.”

“Bluh.” John waved a hand in dismissal. “I need better ideas. The issue with the rom-com thing is that Karkat’s seen them _too_.”

“So he'll appreciate them more,” Rose suggested.

“I think we're on the right track,” Dave said. “You just need to take it a step farther.”

“What does that mean?” John frowned.

“You need to reenact a kiss.”

“That’s so cheesy!” Jade squealed, covering a smile with her hand. “Karkat will love it! You should do that.” She said the last part to John.

John thought about it, but he didn't need to for very long. When he looked to his friends’ faces they were all looking at him in expectation. He put a fist to his palm purposefully.

“I’m going to need a canoe.”

 

+

 

“Why the fuck are they here?”

Karkat gestured to Terezi and Vriska, who were invading all of his personal space and disrespecting all of his personal property. Terezi had her feet draped over his dad’s coffee table, and Vriska had her legs draped over Terezi.

Kanaya stood next to Karkat, leaning on the kitchen island delicately. “They are your friends too, Karkat.”

“I don’t recall agreeing to that.”

“Chill _ax_ , Karkat,” Vriska said. She crossed her palms over each other behind her head. “My gal and I are here because we heard you were having boy problems. Specifically, John problems.” She peeked an eye open to look at him. “And I know _a_ _ll_  about John.”

“What the hell would you know about John?”

“Other than already being an expert on boys,” she started, “I dated John in eighth grade.”

“So naturally, she knows everything about him.” Terezi rolled her eyes.

“Naturally!” Vriska sat up to walk over to Karkat. She was taller even than John, so she towered over him from this distance. Come to think of it, Kanaya did, too. The only person on his side was Terezi, who couldn’t care that much about height, given that she’s blind.

Vriska put a hand to Karkat’s shoulder. “What’s the specific problem, Karkat?”

He rolled his eyes, but relented. “John doesn’t understand the emotional impact of a kiss in the rain, so we’re doing it.” He gestured to his (outdated) cellphone. “I checked, and it rains in three days. He’ll probably be the one to take me out.”

“So…?”

“So I need to really fucking impress him with this _kiss_ ,” Karkat said.

Terezi smiled cheekily. “You realize you just admitted to being a bad kisser.”

Everything Karkat knew about kissing he learned from movies and books and WikiHow articles, so this wasn’t a far-fetched assumption. He stubbornly remained quiet, only shooting a glare at her.

“If you’re looking for kissing practice,” Kanaya said, “I don’t think you’ll find it here.”

“I am _not_  trying to kiss any of you,” Karkat assured her. He shivered at the thought, even though he technically came close to kissing Terezi several times in grade school. “I just want to impress John with what I have.”

“The solution is really simple here,” Vriska said. She was shrugging in an unnecessarily dramatic way. “I don’t see what the problem is.”

Karkat eyed her warily. “What?”

She said, “You have to have sex with him.”

Terezi cackled loudly from her spot on the couch. Karkat, face heating, said, “What? _No_ —"

Kanaya’s voice piped up, curious. “Do you love John, Karkat?”

“No! Wait.” He held his lips shut tight, angry and awed at the realization that, “Yes. Of course, yes.”

Terezi was _flabbergasted_  at this; she sat up with a start. “You do?”

“I’ve had a crush on John since I saw his dumb fucking face when we were like twelve years old.” He said ‘like’ to sound more nonchalant, of course he knew how fucking old he was. “It’d be stupid of me not to.”

“Jeez,” Vriska said.

“Jeez,” Kanaya agreed.

Karkat waved the confession away, before his heart burst from it. “Anyway, I’m not having sex with him.”

“Aw, why not?” Terezi said.

“Just, not then,” he said. “Not like that. He might not even love me back.” He didn’t mean to say the last part, but the longer it hung in the air the realer the possibility felt. He bit his lip.

“Here’s what I think,” Kanaya began. She laced her hands together in front of her and offered an encouraging smile. “When you kiss, just keep yourself open and honest, and he’ll enjoy himself, I’m sure.”

He said, “What if I don’t want to be open and honest?”

“I was under the impression you were in love with him.”

He huffed.

“Well, you say you don’t want to do the dirty, so here’s what _I_ think,” Vriska said. “Just give him your all,” she put a finger to his chest, “without giving him everything.”

 

+

 

The day of their artfully planned kiss was very clearly going to be a rainy day, and Karkat had eyed the gray sky in anticipation.

John, meanwhile, never knew how difficult it would be to get a canoe within a three day time period. The feat was managed — with help from his friends, of course — and getting Karkat into it was the next thing to do. Then the kiss, the magic, and the happily ever after.

John called Karkat and gave him a time to meet him at one of the lesser used docks in the area, barren because of the type of day. He waited with flowers, because he was nothing if not a gentleman.

Karkat showed up actually looking nervous, which made the butterflies in John’s stomach increase tenfold. In the good way. He smiled brightly down at Karkat when he walked towards him. “Hey, Karkat.”

“A canoe?” Karkat looked at the wooden canoe. He looked flushed.

“Impressed? I know.” John held out the flowers. “I have these, too.”

The flowers were forget-me-nots, and way easier to obtain than the canoe. Karkat held them gingerly.

John hopped in the canoe, and held a hand out to him. “Are you ready?”

Karkat took it.

The ride was peaceful but there weren't any ducks, just filthy lake water, with dead leaves resting on its surface. John took the liberty of rowing them around; he had the arms for it, anyway.

“So what’s the plan?” Karkat asked him.

John hummed. “We have fun with this, and when it rains, we get up on that dock and I kiss your socks off.”

“We should celebrate with _The Notebook_ after, at your house.”

“And ruin this perfectly good day?” John laughed when Karkat flicked him. They sat across from each other.

Karkat watched John’s arms as he rowed. “I can't believe you got a fucking boat.”

“Canoe! And I know,” John said. Thunder rumbled overhead. “You should've heard what Dave and the others were recommending I do, it was insane.”

“What’d they say?”

“Flower petals, and sex,” John explained, looking past Karkat. “I was like ‘I would never do that,’ we're not even — Karkat?”

Karkat’s expressions went through a few complicated phases that John couldn't catch, but he noticed the obvious switch between contentment two minutes before and the current frustration. He said, “Are you okay?”

“Can I ask you a question?” Karkat tossed the flowers on the canoe floor between them. “Is this — are you pity dating me?”

John said, “What?”

“‘Oh, poor Karkat, he's liked me for so long I should at least give him a chance,’” he did this voice in a shockingly good John impression. “Something like that?”

“Karkat, no.”

“Take me back to the dock.”

“But Karkat —”

Karkat stood and tried in vain to hide that he was more sad than mad, and made a half-hearted attempt to pretend he would swim there, if he had to. John rushed to grab his oars. “Wait! I will, just hold on —”

Thunder roared again, and John felt the first few raindrops on his skin just as Karkat frantically started crawling out and up onto solid ground. John rushed after him. “Karkat!”

Karkat turned to look at him. “I don't want you to date me just because you feel like you have to.” He spit his next words: “That’s what I get for crushing on the straightest kid in school.”

John felt hurt, but he still only barely knew what they were arguing about. He reached for Karkat’s hand, but was shaken off. “Karkat, I _like_  you.”

The rain fell harder now. Karkat felt his clothes begin to cling to him, and he shifted. He felt tears burn at his eyes and hated himself for it. This was supposed to be a good day. He adamantly looked straight in front of him at John’s chest when pushing out the — inevitable, embarrassing — “But I love _you_.”

Time stopped, but not really, because the sound of rain got louder as they both got soaked with it, and Karkat’s heart was vibrating his entire body with its beats, and even though he wouldn't look at John he could feel John looking at him.

And John was. Unlike Karkat, for John, time was moving, time was _soaring_ , and he was up there in the clouds with it, weightless. He laughed. “Really?”

Karkat could've punched him. Instead he growled lowly, and turned to walk away.

John came back to himself and grabbed the side of Karkat’s shoulders, turning him to face him and not letting go. “Karkat,” he said slowly, he felt like he’d said his boyfriend’s name dozens of times that day already and could say it thousands more, “I love you, too. I think.”

Karkat scowled at him. “I don't want your pity love, either.”

“I’ve never been in love before, Karkat, I don't know how it feels like,” John defended. He had to yell a little to be heard over the rain. “Especially not with — you're right, I was probably the straightest kid in school, but that's just not true anymore. Because I love you, and even if I don't,” he inhaled, “I will. Because I want to.”

Karkat capitulated. “I feel like this whole thing was staged.”

John said, softly, “You really love me?”

Karkat looked him in the eyes, now, blue as any sky but the current one. “Of course I do.”

John smiled. “Can we kiss now?”

Karkat’s gaze softened. “Of course we can.”

He moved, but John stopped him. “Wait. We have to make it as intense as the one in _The Notebook_. That's what all of this is for, after all.”

Karkat nodded. “I can do that.”

So they shared one last mutual look and Karkat rushed at him, lips meeting lips with an urgency Karkat felt in his heart if not his brain. John responded in kind and when he moved to pick Karkat up, Karkat jumped to help him.

The rain stuck to their ins and outs as they pressed closer together and they clutched at each other, mouth accepting mouth. John felt rebirthed; Karkat felt relief ease its way through his bones.

When they pulled apart it wasn't for long, and when it finally was, they held hands all the way home. The forget-me-nots lay forgotten in the canoe, and _The Notebook_ was later watched, and it _did_ ruin their day.

In the best way.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://barium.tumblr.com/)


End file.
